Distinctive, Memorable Trip Into Someone's Floating Hideout

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2013)

This quirky and memorable journey is not so much a story as a sensual experience, exquisitely filmed with several unbelievable but joyous musical sequences. The Legend of 1900 is a strange tale, for sure, of a piano prodigy who has never had a lesson, a man born and left on a luxury liner and, as the years pass, who fears leaving the safety of his safe haven. How much better to stay safely on the sea than venture out into what some might call The Real World!
Many of the formal critics cringed at the film's immersion into sentiment, but that's part and parcel of this glorious evocation of the magic of music, an immersion in a never-was-but-wish- there-was--past. Several long talky sequences go on far too long for the film to be a unalloyed joy from start to finish, but this distinctive floating world is still a wonder if you don't expect guns and sex and rock and roll.